O Jerusalem is the fifth in Laurie R. King's excellent IMO Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle and Kobo US. Titles in this series tend to be really expensive in the US ($9-ish and up) when not on sale, and don't go on sale very often, so grab it while you can.
Kindle US:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0027G6XCY
Kobo US:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/o-jerusalem-1
Spoiler:
Quote:
At the close of the year 1918, forced to flee England's green and pleasant land, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes enter British-occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes' enigmatic brother, Mycroft.
"Gentlemen, we are at your service." Thus Holmes greets the two travel-grimed Arab figures who receive them in the orange groves fringing the Holy Land. Whatever role could the volatile Ali and the taciturn Mahmoud play in Mycroft's design for this land the British so recently wrested from the Turks? After passing a series of tests, Holmes and Russell learn their guides are engaged in a mission for His Majesty's Government, and disguise themselves as Bedouins--Russell as the beardless youth "Amir"--to join them in a stealthy reconnaissance through the dusty countryside.
A recent rash of murders seems unrelated to the growing tensions between Jew, Moslem, and Christian, yet Holmes is adamant that he must reconstruct the most recent one in the desert gully where it occurred. His singular findings will lead him and Russell through labyrinthine bazaars, verminous inns, cliff-hung monasteries--and into mortal danger. When her mentor's inquiries jeopardize his life, Russell fearlessly wields a pistol and even assays the arts of seduction to save him. Bruised and bloodied, the pair ascend to the jewellike city of Jerusalem, where they will at last meet their adversary, whose lust for savagery and power could reduce the city's most ancient and sacred place to rubble and ignite this tinderbox of a land....
Classically Holmesian yet enchantingly fresh, sinuously plotted, with colorful characters and a dazzling historic ambience, O Jerusalem sweeps readers ever onward in the thrill of the chase.
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I also noticed that the first title in the series,
The Beekeeper's Apprentice, dropped to $3.99 around the first of the month and unusally is still there, so possibly as part of the Kindle monthly deal ???, matched at Kobo.
Kindle US:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003OUXE6U/
Kobo US:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...r-s-apprentice
Spoiler:
Quote:
The Twentieth-Anniversary Edition of the First Novel of the Acclaimed Mary Russell Series by Edgar Award–Winning Author Laurie R. King.
An Agatha Award Best Novel Nominee • Named One of the Century's Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association
In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles onto him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern, twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. They are soon called to Wales to help Scotland Yard find the kidnapped daughter of an American senator, a case of international significance with clues that dip deep into Holmes's past. Full of brilliant deduction, disguises, and danger, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, the first book of the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries, is "remarkably beguiling" (The Boston Globe).
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